Snow in the Suburbs

The wind is blowing the snow across the yard. The sky is filled with the swirling flakes, but it's warm inside. The following poem "Snow in the Suburbs" was written by Thomas Hardy and published in his Collected Poems in 1925. Thomas Hardy is one of my favorite poets and authors. If you've never read his works, or if you're a frequent reader of his works, here is one of my favorite Thomas Hardy poems.

"Snow in the Suburbs"

Every branch big with it,
Bent every twig with it;
Every fork like a white web-foot;
Every street and pavement mute:
Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward, when
Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again.
The palings are glued together like a wall,
And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall.

A sparrow enters the tree
Whereon immediately
A snow-lump thrice his own slight size
Descends on him and showers his head and eyes.
And overturns him,
And near inurns him,
And lights on a nether twig, when its brush
Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush.

The steps are a blanched slope,
Up which, with feeble hope,
A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;
And we take him in.

Thomas Hardy, 1925